It ’s recently been support that this skull , believe to be a unique specimen , belong to the first bang half - narwhal half - beluga loanblend . Does that make it a " narwhuga " or a " beluwhal ? "
scientist at the Natural History Museum of Denmark have recently carry out genetic analysis of the exceedingly strange specimen , officially confirm long - held suspicions that it is the skull of a beluga - narwhal crossbreed . Reporting in the journalScientific Reports , their analysis showed that the male specimen was 54 percentage beluga and 46 percent narwhal . try by its mitochondrial genome , a modest dowry of the entire DNA that ’s only inherited from mother to materialization , the hybrid ’s female parent was a narwhal .
Scientists first got their hands on the skull in 1990 after spotting it on the roof of an Inuit toolshed in West Greenland ’s Disko Bay . The animal was killed some three or four years previously , so the skull was stripped of its flesh , but the Hunter remembered the individual clearly : it was grey-headed all - over with the tail of a narwhal and flipper of a beluga hulk . Manyresearchers have since speculatedthe specimen could have been a hybrid , but they were unable to definitively establish it – until now .
“ The skull has been in the museum since , and only now because of methodological development – and , I infer , my own pursuit in belugas and narwhals , which my inquiry group are working on – have we been able to revisit the specimen with new methods to affirm its hybrid origin , ” study authorEline Lorenzen , associate prof and curator at the Museum , severalize IFLScience .
" The method acting were [ previously ] not uncommitted to affirm whether it was indeed a hybrid – and in which case , was it a first genesis hybrid or a backcross or what ? "
It ’s hard to get any insights into how this cross would have behaved or appeared . However , by looking at levels of C isotopes in the skull , we do know its diet was dissimilar from either parent species , most likely forage closer to the bottom of the seafloor .
narwhal and belugas are extremely strange creatures . Together , they make up the only two member of the cetacean class Monodontidae , however , they have some distinct differences . Narwhalsare mysterious Arctic - dwelling toothed hulk with a single unicorn - comparable " tusk , ” which is technically a tooth . Belugasare an funnily white coinage of saw-toothed whales with a bulbous “ melonhead ” , which gives them that nickname .
“ Based on genic datum , the species are estimated to have diverge more or less 5.5 million years ago , so they are pretty diverging , although they do share characteristic , ” continued Lorenzen .
Both coinage have little chunks of habitat and some migration routes that frustrate paths , such as the coast of West Greenland where this specimen was collected . Scientists have also spot thetwo metal money interminglingat the mouth of the St Lawrence River near the Canadian province of Quebec , in what appear to be the pillow slip of a gang of beluga whale adopting a lost juvenile narwhal .
However , we know very small about the sexual activity lives of both mintage as they pass most of their mating time of year in ice - covered Arctic seas . Evidently , some interspecies Arctic canoodling went on here , however , the researchers still are n’t totally indisputable how this improbable phenomenon came about .
